Gun debate mirrors divisive US society

By Charles Gray Source:Global Times Published: 2014-9-2 19:23:01

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT



At first glance, the tragic death of firing range instructor Charles Vacca at the hands of a nine-year-old girl who lost control of an Uzi submachine gun is simply an example of a failure in range safety procedures.

A number of experts have pointed out that a young child with no previous experience should have never been allowed to fire an automatic weapon, making this an example of an accident that could very well have been avoided had the supervising adults exercised better judgment.

Nevertheless, as with all firearm related incidents in the US, this accident has immediately become bound up in the larger debate pitting US gun culture against anti-gun advocates.

It must be said that for many individuals, the actual nature of the accident is secondary to a desire to push their political and cultural agenda regarding the place of firearms in the US.

On the one side, some rather hysterical commentators have argued that this incident is another sign of the US' unhealthy obsession with firearms.

On the other hand, Second Amendment advocates having an equally hysterical fear that any form of regulation will be used as a backdoor method to restrict their right to own weapons.

Ignoring the legal issues, this debate can be boiled down to one between those who see gun rights as a positive good and those who see them as a positive evil. It is a cultural debate rather than one that is firmly grounded in factual evidence.

For many firearm owners, the Second Amendment remains a bulwark against government tyranny, and the individual right to possess firearms is a core part of what it is to be a US citizen.

Not all or even most of these individuals are political extremists. In their view, gun rights are under siege in the US, and any retreat is almost certain to lead to the eventual loss of a right that they consider central to their cultural and political identity.

Furthermore, they question why only the Second Amendment has found itself under such determined attack.

These feelings are further enhanced by the central role firearms and the concept of the citizen militia has played in US history.

The Minutemen of the Revolutionary War have long been idolized as citizens who made use of their right to bear arms in order to battle the professional soldiers of the British Empire.

Gun ownership has also been glamorized in the popular works of historical fiction regarding the US' Westward expansion. The fact that the American West also saw numerous attempts to regulate gun possession and use is somewhat less widely known by many Americans.

For this reason, many gun owners see the right to bear arms as a cornerstone of the US' historical and cultural heritage and a right that is integral to their identity as American citizens. To compromise on the issue of gun ownership is to compromise on the very nature of their citizenship.

This is especially true given the widespread fear that anti-gun advocates intend to eventually seek to impose an outright ban of the possession of firearms.

For gun advocates, any compromise on the question of gun ownership is quite simply un-American. To them, gun culture is a celebration of US heritage and cultural identity.

Conversely, many gun control advocates see US gun culture as a symbol of everything that is wrong with US culture.

Despite the fact that violent crime has been steadily declining, this movement continues to hold that widespread gun ownership is an endemic flaw in US society.

To them, Vacca's death is a natural consequence of the unhealthy glorification of firearms.

Finally, this debate has been impacted by the fact that pro and anti-gun control advocates are largely divided along the conservative-liberal political axis.

The debate regarding US gun culture tends to be subsumed in the ever-growing partisan divide that has plagued recent US politics.

Indeed, many attacks on "gun nuts" or "anti-gun nuts" are motivated as much by larger political and cultural conflicts as they are any specific fear regarding gun rights.

Ultimately, this tragedy will change little about how Americans view gun ownership and use.

Gun advocates will see it as a simple case of poor safety procedures leading to an avoidable tragedy. Anti-gun activists will see it as a natural result of the US' fetishization of firearms.

For other observers, this event and the debates surrounding it merely prove that the deep divisions regarding firearms and their place in the US remain as divisive as ever.

The author is a freelance writer based in Corona, California. charlesgray109@gmail.com



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